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By the Editors of Food & Wine Magazine

As farmers' markets burst with tomatoes, blackberries, peaches, plumsand nectarines, I unpack and dust off my summer preserving tools. I buy new rubber gaskets for my canning jars, cheesecloth for straining berries, and enough sugar to bury a small animal.

By far my favorite tool for preserving is the food mill. In years past, when making fruit jams or tomato sauce, I would simmerfruit, mash it, then strain it through a fine-meshed sieve—entirely too much work for me nowadays. With a food mill, though, I can combine the mashing and straining into one step. The resulting puree is silky smooth and free of skins and seeds.

At a recent All-Clad press event, I was super impressed by their brand-new food mill and wished it had been available when I was developing these recipes (in the dead of winter). The discs have tiny raised teeth to catch the skin and seeds as the handle is spun, allowing more of the puree to be passed through. The legs are rubberized for better stability and the knob feels great in my hands. Luckily, with summer in full swing, there’s no lack of fruit and tomatoes to pass through my new food mill. (I got a prototype, but you can get yours in just a few weeks—it lauches in early September, peak tomato and peach month!)

The just-opened Andaz Fifth Avenue in NYC may be getting all of the attention with its incredible artwork (it’s worth a trip just to see the eight-foot-high Nick Hornby sculpture) and its ground-level shop selling Blue Bottle Coffee and Mast Bros. Chocolate. But its older sister property, the Andaz Wall Street, is about to one-up it. This Saturday, Andaz Wall Street debuts its very own farmers’ market. All of the participating purveyors (Migliorelli Farm, Beth’s Farm Kitchen, Eckerton Hill Farm) supply the hotel’s restaurant Wall & Water. There will also be live music, plus monthly cooking classes conducted by Wall & Water’s chef Maximo Lopez May. The market will be held every Saturday from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. through November.

During a recent weekend in the Berkshires, I stopped in the cool little town of Great Barrington, Massachusetts, to stock up on snacks for the ride home and spent nearly an hour wandering around Rubiner’s Cheesemongers & Grocers. Located in an old bank on Main Street, this super-artisanal store is beyond forward-thinking when it comes to what it offers shoppers.

Here, five top reasons to drop in:

1. An insane selection of more than 130 artisan cheeses that ripen in the back cave (formerly the bank vault).

3. Rubiner’s works with famed fishmonger Rod Browne Mitchell and Browne Trading Company to run something similar to a CSA for fish. Locals who sign up get an e-mail every Monday night listing the week’s catch. They place an order by 4 p.m. Wednesday and can pick up or (for a small fee) get home-delivery of the same superfresh seafood that goes to chefs like Eric Ripert and Thomas Keller.

4. Farmer’s Discount: Anyone who makes their primary living through farming or the production of artisan foods gets a 20-percent discount.

5. In the summer, Brooklyn’s awesome Blue Marble ice cream sets up shop out front, serving cups and cones of their decadent flavors like Stick o Butter Pecan. Even more delicious, though, are the homemade ice cream sandwiches that are sold inside. Blue Marble’s café au lait sandwiched between two chocolate sugar cookies was perfection.

My crazy wedding season (six this summer) officially kicked off this past weekend. Lucky for me, my friends have all chosen pretty awesome locations in which to get married. Wedding number one took me to the Berkshires in Massachusetts. The wedding was at an adorable place called Santarella in Tyringham that looked like it should have been the hamlet where the hobbits live in Lord of the Rings. I managed to sneak in a marathon eating tour of the area between wedding festivities, and—contrary to a recent Huffington Post story—had some amazing meals. Here, a rundown:

I stayed at the historic, 18th-century Red Lion Inn on a corner of Main Street in Stockbridge. The inn feels like a tribute to Americana with its amazing art collection, Otis Birdcage elevator (which you can really ride on) and even a desk once used by Abraham Lincoln. The restaurant menu in the dining room is a tribute to the area’s local artisans and farmers, including Farm Girl Farm and Berkshire Brewing Company in Great Barrington; Hill Top Orchards in Richmond; and Old Chatham Sheepherding Co. in Old Chatham, NY. Chef Brian Alberg recently introduced separate sustainable menus featuring dishes like an irresistible broken-yolk breakfast sandwich with smoked bacon on thick, toasted Berkshire Mountain Bakery bread. His dinner menu offers some surprises like a roasted eggplant Bolognese that uses quinoa spaghetti and basil oil; and for dessert, a house-made version of my favorite Aussie sweet, Tim Tams.

In nearby Lenox, brunch at the laid-back, two-year-old Haven Cafe & Bakery is phenomenal. I took home the house-made granola and ginger-cardamom scones and stayed for the Eggs “Sardo”—poached eggs topped with sautéed artichoke hearts, spinach and dill hollandaise.

Around the block on Church Street, the Wit Gallery showcases an eclectic mix of art including photography, sculpture and mixed media and recently also started selling artisanal wines from small, family-owned producers like Eric Kent.

Just a few doors away is the barely year-old, 28-seat restaurant Nudel, where chef-owner Bjorn Somlo cooks remarkable seasonally driven food with local ingredients. My braised-Berkshire-pork sandwich with pickled vegetables and spicy sambal aioli had me plotting ways to skip the wedding dinner so I could come back to try his bone-marrow Bolognese or garganelli with ramps and almond pesto.

I’ve recently put together my summer reading list to keep me occupied when the waves are flat this summer at the beach. This past weekend I finished The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers. The witty new memoir from Josh Kilmer-Purcell tells the story of how he and partner Brent Ridge unexpectedly found themselves reviving the dormant Beekman farm in Sharon Springs, NY. They channel Martha Stewart (Brent was vice president at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia) as they make a go at goat-herding, heirloom vegetable gardening and even soap-making. At the beginning, the author cautions that the book isn’t about living your dream: “It will not inspire you. You will not be emboldened to attempt anything more than making a fresh pot of coffee.” But after reading the ups (perfectly ripe Cherokee Purple tomatoes) and downs (dealing with a truck full of stinky, sick baby goats or a tree of dead sparrows) of farm life I was ready to move to the country and start homesteading.